GarageRiot

Donovan Lara - Founder and CEO for GarageRiot

The Car Enthusiast Social Network - where you’ll meet wrenchturners, master mechanics, tuners, traders and enthusiasts of all types.

Contact: Donovan Lara at donovan@garageriot.com | N/A | Visit Online!

         

• The history of GarageRiot: the name, and what inspired it’s creation.
• What’s in Donovan’s Garage and other Petrol-head Questions.
• How is GarageRiot structured? What are some of the features of the platform? How can one access the site?
• How does one become a member of GarageRiot? Are there membership dues? What are the perks of being a member of GarageRiot?
• GarageRiot events –  what kind and where. 
• What’s on the Road Map for GarageRiot? New features or capabilities coming soon?

and much, much more!

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] BreakFix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all over the autosphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors, designers, and everything in between. Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrolheads that wonder, how did they get that job? Or become that person.

The road to success is paved by all of us. Because everyone has a story.

Everyone is looking for somewhere to belong. One of the main reasons for me that GTM was created was because we wanted to return that social aspect and sense of belonging back to track days. Utilizing social networking online is huge and a great way to stay connected to our groups. However, as much as the internet brings us closer together, it also tends to divide us into factions, and petrolheads and car enthusiasts are not exempt.

We even get as granular as marquee clubs, model specific forums, and branded content on websites no one has ever heard of. But

Crew Chief Eric: what if there was one [00:01:00] corner of the net where there was no place for political rants, baby pictures, or even kitty memes? What if there was a place where obsessions run solely on petrol?

Enter Garage Riot, the car enthusiast social network, where you’ll meet wrench turners, master mechanics, tuners, traders, and enthusiasts of all types. And with us tonight is Donovan Lara, Garage Riot’s CEO and founder, to explain how all this works.

Crew Chief Brad: And as always, I’m your host, Brad and I’m Eric. So let’s roll.

Crew Chief Eric: So welcome to break fixed Donovan.

Crew Chief Brad: Hey, thanks guys.

Crew Chief Eric: Let’s hit up the hardest of hard hitting questions.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh boy.

Crew Chief Eric: What’s in a name? What does garage riot mean? Where did it come from? Where’d you get the idea?

Donovan Lara: You know, it took a while to come up with that name. We tossed around several names that I won’t share with you because they’re embarrassing at this point.

For a while, it was hard, you know, looking at some of the, the original names. I think at one point we were looking at car [00:02:00] registry or some other things. There was an octane reference here or there, you know, it’s hard finding a URL, first of all, that, that isn’t taken, you know, oddly enough, garage right hit me, I was on a beach in Florida.

You know, kind of taking a vacation and just sitting there in a lounge chair, chilling out. And I don’t know, it just, I thought, Hey, garage ride might be kind of cool. So I would love to give you some kind of, you know, amazing, you know, meaning to it, but it really just kind of, it all kind of came together and thought it was cool.

Crew Chief Eric: So that actually begs an interesting question. Are the members called rioters?

Donovan Lara: You know, we’ve been asked that before. They are now. Yeah, we’ve affectionately kind of called them that, but you know, you gotta be careful. You can’t, can’t talk about writing too much these days.

Crew Chief Eric: So the name came after the idea, which is usually the case, right?

So where did the idea for Garage Riot come from? What inspired you?

Donovan Lara: You know, I’m a car guy like, like you guys are, and really at the heart of it, you know, I spent a lot of time searching for parts for a car that was restoring. And, you know, I started to realize after a while I’m going over [00:03:00] here for information.

I’m going over here for parts. I’m going over here for this, that, and the other sort of thinking about, wouldn’t it be great if there was one place that United all of those pieces together and at the time, and even still, there really isn’t one, there isn’t one place where you can go and really do everything that.

You know, you look for an individual websites across the web. Our goal was to be that place. And we’re getting, you know, we’re getting there foundationally. We’ve got some, some things to do and we’re not quite the be all end all for car enthusiasts just yet. But now you really think about when you go to a lot of places on the web, really, they are divided up.

You know, you’ve got your BMW forums and you’ve got your, you know, this, that, and the other, but. There aren’t very many places where you can go and really be among just car enthusiasts themselves, right? I don’t have to own a Chevy to be friends with a BMW guy and vice versa. And that part of it, I think is missing.

And I think we suffer from that, um, as car enthusiasts on the web, you know, there really should be a place to unite us all. And if you want to segment off, that’s great too, but even on Facebook, [00:04:00] you know, there are groups that you join if you’re a BMW owner or a Porsche owner. So, you know, at its core, it’s really.

Getting everybody together in that truest sense. And you know, when you go to a car show, you don’t skip over the 34 Ford or you don’t skip over the 63 Corvette. You appreciate them all. Hopefully if you’re really a car enthusiast and talk to those people. So it really, at its heart, that was a place for us all to be together and, you know, kind of service our needs to beyond just the social interaction piece of it.

Crew Chief Brad: Are there two wheel enthusiasts on garage ride as well?

Donovan Lara: Yeah, that’s the ultimate goal. I mean, ultimately, and we started out that way, but it was hard. I’m not a, I’m not a motorcyclist and I don’t really know anybody in that. I mean, I have people that ride, but. I’m not as connected to that world is car world, but the ultimate goal is that, you know, Hey, if you’ve got a motorcycle and you want to have a motorcycle profile and a car profile, jump on there, man, you know, it’s, it’s all for everybody because I think there’s a lot of common chat, you know, we can talk about, you know, motorsports and everything.

And we talk about, you know, you guys have seen it. We talk about [00:05:00] MotoGP and other things on there. So I think it crosses over. We just haven’t actively gone after that particular market yet.

Crew Chief Eric: So this idea has been percolating for a while. And obviously you guys have been live for a while. So when did this all start?

Donovan Lara: You know, I actually had the idea back in 2006 and at the time, you know, development costs were really, really expensive. I tried, I got some investors together and we just couldn’t pull it off. And, you know, it kept me up night after night for years and years and years until, you know, we got to a point where development costs were better and, you know, some platforms are available for us to really take advantage of that.

So the site itself now has been up, I think this is our fourth year.

Crew Chief Eric: And we heard from Emily and Nate on a previous episode that, you know, especially Emily, she’s a member of Garage Ride for a long time now, has a very low member number. And she said that she met you guys at the vintage. You were there with a booth and trying to get people interested and you’ve grown leaps and bounds since that point.

What’s membership look like these days?

Donovan Lara: We’re in the couple thousand mark. I’d have to pull up the exact number for you. But, uh, yeah, we definitely [00:06:00] grown vintage was one of those places where since, you know, I’m a BMW owner, we, we already had a little bit of a network there. So we thought that’d be a good place to test it out.

And the vintage where I, where I met Emily was actually the first time that we launched to the world. So we launched at vintage first, that was April or may ish, I think. The site had been up since about January and in various stages. So that was kind of our test market. We really wanted to go live to the rest of the world in July.

So we did that and it was pretty good. You know, it’s, it’s one of those things where, you know, people don’t know who you are, so you got to do some explaining, but that was kind of a built in market for us. So that, that was really foundationally, that was key for us.

Crew Chief Eric: So since we’re talking about garages, what’s in your current garage?

Donovan Lara: Oh boy, I’m down a car since we talked last, not crashed. Well, that’s another story, but the daily beaters, we’ve got an Explorer 2013 Mini Cooper S and then in the actual garage, not in the driveway. I’ve got a 88 BMW M3, got an 88 BMW M5. And then nestled over on the other side of that is a 73 Porsche 911 [00:07:00] that I’ve been restoring.

There’s the air quotes, right? For a really long time. And then further down the road in some storage spaces, I’ve got another E28 M5 and a 1980 BMW 320i sport package car. And I just, the one we were talking about a minute ago, I had a E36 M3 that I sold to a 17 year old who wrecked it two weeks later.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s interesting. So obviously you’re a BMW fan and you’re probably a fan of other cars. So what are some of your favorites since we’re talking about cars?

Donovan Lara: Yeah. You know, I’ve always, and I still tell people I’m a Porsche guy, even though I own more BMWs, but you know, even as a kid, I was always just kind of captivated by Porsches and, and I finally traced it back a few years ago and what it was.

And when I was a kid, you remember the, the little slot car tracks, right? And you can pull the trigger. And my dad and my uncles used to take over the kitchen table with one of those tracks and the cars they had, they had a nine 17 K and they had, you know, the, the Ferrari at the time and everything, but those nine 17s, they had three or four of them.

And one of them was the Gulf [00:08:00] livery. They had a green one, which I don’t know where that one came from. And, uh, you know, of course the red Lamar winning car. And I, you know, I realized at that point. That that’s still my favorite race car of all time, just the shape of it. But that’s really what my love of Porsche happened.

And, you know, there, there are tales of me and, you know, 10 years old, taking pictures of neighbor’s car, sitting out in the driveway, there was a bronze brown colored nine 24, that was a couple of houses down. And I used to go over there and take my, you know, camera and take pictures of it and, uh, kind of evolve from there, but I love all cars, obviously I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t have started this site if that wasn’t the case.

And unfortunately, I love way more cars than I can afford to own and have the garage space for. But yeah, you know, I’ve had, I’ve had a 63 split window of that. I had that car for about a year, year and a half. I had a Datsun 1600 low window. I’ve heard short window, they were short windows and somebody corrected me recently, but I think he was wrong.

Uh, 67, you know, and various cars in between. So I’m kind of all over the place.

Crew Chief Eric: And we’ll return to your obsession with cars a little later [00:09:00] in the episode, but let’s get back to talking about GarageRider a little bit. So we’ve recently, you know, engaged with you guys and I’ve, I’ve been on the platform and so has Brad and a bunch of our other members are, have joined us.

Recently joined as well. And I find it very inviting. I find it to be very relaxing environment. It stands true to what it says on the website, right? It is car enthusiast through and through. You’re not out there talking, you know, political nonsense, whatever. And it’s actually not even a repeat of the same content you would see on Instagram or drive tribe or somewhere else.

It’s actually. Some legitimate content that’s coming through. People are like, Hey, what do you think about this? What do you think about that? And there’s some really great conversations and banter going back and forth. So I found it to be really refreshing, even coming from the motor sports world. And we’re all car enthusiasts at the end of the day, but everybody’s bringing something to the table, which is awesome.

So let’s talk about why garage ride. How do you bring more people in? How do you get more car enthusiasts enthusiastic about garage ride?

Donovan Lara: Yeah, I mean, I think you nailed it. Really, it is, you know, you think about the world today and the Facebook feeds, right? And if you’re not covered [00:10:00] up with political conversation or, you know, somebody ranting about something, I would be surprised.

So, even before this latest, you know, kind of rash of political talk and, you know, kids, you know, my kids potty trained today and here’s this new cooking utensil I bought. We wanted to get away from that and really just talk cars. That’s it. You know, and, and political conversation is prohibited on our site.

We haven’t run into it, but you know, if somebody was to get on there, start talking about it, that’s, that’s a no, no. And the reason for that is, you know, it turns people off. That’s not why they’re there. And really when you think about Facebook, that’s not whether they’re either, right. It’s to find their girlfriend from high school kind of thing.

It’s not about, you know, those other kinds of things. So that’s what it is. And it’s an environment that, you know, like you said, you know, we want to kind of nurture those conversations and those relationships and really make it a place where people can come and, and share. And, you know, like you said, I’m, I’m really impressed with the different types of content that’s on there.

You know, it’s sometimes it’s just straight links to articles or videos, but you know, there’s people on there that, that ask questions, which is great. Right. [00:11:00] We all have a wealth. Of knowledge, you know, some more than others, but somebody get on there and ask, Hey, you know, I’m having this problem with, you know, this car and this is what’s going on and finding that again, which is another reason why it’s not specific to a make, you know, somebody gets on there and says, I got a problem with my, I don’t know, 69 Camaro, a guy that may not be in that group, but used to own one can say, Oh yeah, that was an old, you know, you do this, that, and the other.

So. It’s really just that environment. We want people to feel free to share and really talk about what’s important to them in their car.

Crew Chief Eric: Speaking of features that garage ride has. I mean, when you’re, when you first log onto the site, you realize you look at it and you go, Oh, I recognize this. It feels like Facebook, or it feels like Twitter or LinkedIn, or a lot of the other platforms that you’re used to.

But under the hood, there’s a lot more going on than what you just see. The first minute you log onto garage, right? So let’s talk about some of the other features and capabilities that are there for members of the service.

Donovan Lara: Yeah. And that was intentional, right? We want people to be familiar with how to interact on a social network like [00:12:00] that.

So while we didn’t model it specifically after Facebook, the interaction, you know, Instagram, Twitter, it’s very similar. So. You know, we have, uh, obviously the feed, the activity feed where people go on and talk. We discussed that, you know, we also have a pretty robust album section photo section. So, you know, that’s a place for people to post about their own car, but also, you know, events.

I was in an event this past weekend and you can’t help, but take a hundred pictures of all the cars in the parking lot. So it’s a place to put those, you know, places like Facebook have that sort of, but not really in that context. Right. If I’m on a group and somebody’s posted a hundred photos of car show, they went to, I may or may not click through.

I don’t really care if it’s not contextually based on what I’m looking at. So really that’s a way for people to do that. Um, you know, we have an article section on there. And while we’re not trying to be a media outlet, you know, it’s a chance for members and ourselves to write articles that we think people might enjoy.

You know, my 63 split window story is on there. Emily wrote, you know, some articles on [00:13:00] there about what it is to be, you know, A woman in the car world. So it’s great. And any, any member is welcome to contribute an article, you know, we want to, want to share that as well, but we have a lot of other features coming and we have some that we’ve kind of narrowed down a little bit.

So we started originally with a really wide scope of features. I mean, everything you can imagine, we had. All the pages, the groups and things, uh, we had classifieds events and we really tried to narrow that down. You know, it was, you know, imagine events alone, right? All the events in the U S. So really tried to focus that down.

So when you come in, we want you to contribute and, you know, talk to everybody in there. It’s not about necessarily spending all your time in classifieds, which, you know, we’ll get back there, but you know, we’re slowly opening that back up is, as we feel the needs kind of happen. But, you know, like I said, the, the, my garage part is coming soon.

Um, you know, we’re still working through it. And, you know, you know, when you develop something, there’s always something new you think of in process. So it’s continuing to get kicked back a little bit, but you know, that’s something cool that, you know, we think users will be able to come into. And while the concept of my garage isn’t [00:14:00] necessarily new, it does solve a problem.

Right. And you think about how many times have you. You know, wanted to show somebody your car and you flip through 900 pictures on your phone, trying to find pictures. So it it’s core, it’s a place for you to quickly pull up all that information, but show your car, show you what you’ve done to it. So really excited about that.

And I think that’s something that’s going to keep people on the site and coming back.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, I can’t. Think of a time where I haven’t been in that particular use case where it’s like, Hey, let me show you my baby pictures that aren’t my kids, right? My cars. And it’s like, you’re sitting there scrolling. You see people just rolling their eyes.

Like, Oh my God, here we go again. But yeah, it’s having that one click away rather than, you know, scrolling for days will be, will be fantastic. GarageRite is available on iPhone and Android. There’s a web version as well. And I happen to use that one on my desk. So available on all three platforms. I find it to be rather smooth.

Conversation is good. And to your point, there’s a lot of really great activity on there. Now I will say to sell it to my motorsports compatriots, I had to kind of frame it. I know you smirk every time [00:15:00] I say this, but I’m like, Hey guys. It’s like the U S based version of drive tribe. Right. And I have to say that because thanks to Brad, who’s sitting here quietly smiling, GTM was one of the first tribes on drive tribe.

So we’re, we’re listed as GTM HPD champions. If you go look us up and we were very fortunate to get on there early. And, you know, obviously that’s sponsored by Clarkson Hammond in may, you know, the, the grand tour and top gear and all that kind of stuff. That’s a kind of similar platform. Do you see them as a competitor?

Is there somebody else out there that, or. Or do you guys stand alone in this particular vertical?

Donovan Lara: I don’t think we have a direct competitor in the market, right? There are people that do some things we do and we do some things other people do, but I don’t think there’s, there’s one you could say, Oh, this is just another version of garage riot drive.

Tribe to me is. Awesome. Right. It’s a great site, but to me, it’s more media outlet led, right? It’s more about the stories and things, the tribes and things are that group aspect of it. But, you know, when you really look at that, that’s not much different than Facebook groups and some other [00:16:00] things. So, you know, I think that’s where we’re different.

And this is going to be a terrible analogy here, but if you imagine drive tribe was more the Facebook of that type of World, we would be more of the Instagram type of that world, right? Well, we’re, we’re more streamlined. Just get on there, show us what you got. Let’s have some conversations. It’s less about all of the news and all the articles that we can share with you.

So, yeah, I mean, and of course I wouldn’t want to compete with those guys, right? They’ve got endless money to compete with us, but you know, beyond that, we’ve, we’ve searched for competitors and really there are people that do slightly similar, slightly different things than us, but you know, and your users will probably Prove me wrong and say, Hey, these guys are like you, but we haven’t seen anybody like that just yet.

Crew Chief Eric: I find it to be very unique. And to your point about drive traveling, no offense to them. It’s almost too much sometimes, right? You’re right. It’s almost too commercialized. I see the same articles again, like I would see on jalopnik or I would see on a bunch of other places. It’s all just reposted there.

Crew Chief Brad: So i’ve noticed on like other Facebook groups and and stuff like that [00:17:00] that there’s a sense of elitism You know, where what I have is better than what you have and stuff like that. And it sounds like garage riot kind of shies away from that. And it’s much more inviting and much more, you know, just general car enthusiasm.

All are welcome. Is that, is that the case? And that’s kind of what you were trying to do with it.

Donovan Lara: Yeah, that’s exactly what we were going for. And we’ve been lucky that people, I don’t know if it’s the vibe that we put out or people, you know, we’re just attracting the right people, but we have a really good community and I know what you’re talking about and I’m still in Facebook groups and things myself.

And, you know, you especially get somebody on there that asks a question, they’re brand new, right. And it happens to be a question that’s been answered over and over and over again, and you always get that. The first, you know, smart Alec answer. And it’s like, come on, man, you couldn’t spend, you know, five seconds typing something nice, or I saw one the other day and I can’t remember exactly what it was, but it was, somebody was asking a question, like what kind of fluid should I put in, you know, this, that, or the other.

And. And the answer that somebody gave them, it seemed serious, but it [00:18:00] was so wrong. If that person took them seriously, it could really have done some damage to their car. And it’s like, everybody else knew, I guess it was a joke if they knew the answer, but you know, why be like that? There’s no point in trying to be cooler than anybody else.

I mean, it’s, it’s really, let’s all just, just hang out and get along. And yeah, we, we try to be as humble as possible. And like I said, I don’t know if that that’s what everybody picks on or we just got the lucky, lucky group of people.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, I’ll be honest. I thought that was one of the more surprising things about a large social network like Garage Riot and that coming to the table as a track rat and a longtime car enthusiast, neither Brad or I were both on there.

We’re not coming to the table like as the car show scene, you know, we’re not doing the grid life or anything like that. We’re track rats. We’re coaches, right? We’re in the right seat. We’re in a totally different level. And I can’t say then than everybody that’s there. I’m sure there’s other people that are in the same boat that we’re in, but.

Every time we throw something up, I always find like people like, look at it. They respect it. There’s good feedback. It’s not like, Oh man, you guys again with your, whatever, you know, and we’re, we’re trying not to [00:19:00] flood it either. You know, it’s just, I kind of find interesting the relationship between the people there.

It’s, it’s very inviting at the end of the day. So. Let’s talk then and let’s switch a little bit and let’s get back to Donovan, the car enthusiast for, for a couple of minutes, shall we? So we talked about what’s in your garage, you know, things like that, but being a car enthusiast is multifaceted. So there’s the car show aspect of it.

There’s the racing aspect of it. Then there’s also the voyeuristic side of it, right? There’s always something that draws you and something you’d like to watch or something you want to spectate. And this is going to be motor sports related because we are GTM. Do you have a favorite motor sports discipline?

Donovan Lara: I do it’s changed. So in the early days it was DTM, but you know, when, when I was really probably most interested in that, we couldn’t get it over here now. You can, you can see it fairly often, but so DTM and my family’s from Germany. So you can see a little bit over there and then went on into, of course, you know, Lamar and those types of cars these days it’s F1, however, I think Lewis Hamilton is great, but, uh, and I was listening to your podcast [00:20:00] talking about it.

You know, I mean, come on, man, it’s, it’s, uh, it’s really just, who’s going to come in second and third and fourth. So, like I said, I like the guy, I think he’s amazing. Now he’s seven time world champion and I’ll be excited to see him win his eighth, which he probably will. You know, I’m still in the, the Botas guys and in Vettel, I want to see him come back and some of those.

So, but it’s interesting, you know, I, I tried to watch F1 off and on throughout the years and I could never get into it. And all my car buddies were like, man, you got to watch F1. I think it was 2017. I was watching a race and, uh, it might’ve been in Russia or it was, you know, somewhere over there. And it was the race where you guys probably remember where Hamilton brake checked Vettel and he got up next to him and swerved into him.

And, you know, they were exchanging words from that point on. I was like, okay, now this is, this is good. Right. And you start to see the personalities and really until you get into the personalities, it’s really hard to get engaged in a motor sport. And that’s something I miss from IndyCar. You know, I don’t really know those guys.

Very well. But, you know, in Formula One, you start to see their, their personalities and especially with the Netflix show, I forget what it’s called now, where they go behind the [00:21:00] scenes.

Crew Chief Brad: Arrive to survive.

Donovan Lara: Yeah. And that, that really helps too. And you get their backstory. So that that’s kinda, that’s where I play these days is F1.

Crew Chief Eric: I am still. 1000, right? I am. I cannot find anybody that likes WRC. What’s somebody write me? There’s got to be somebody out there that likes rally. But anyway, it’s because

Crew Chief Brad: nobody knows how to get it. Nobody

Crew Chief Eric: to watch it. You’re the only

Crew Chief Brad: person in the world

Crew Chief Eric: that really simple folks. I’m going to lay it out for you.

Red Bull TV for free all in 4k. You can watch Amazing coverage of WRC and WRC2 from the driver’s perspective. Their recaps are amazing. They summarize the race down. If you don’t want to watch the whole thing, you can watch it live. It’s all up to you, but it is fantastic. It’s one of the best places. And then if you don’t get enough.

WRC that way, go to motorsport. tv and you can get it free there too, with a basic account. So anyway, I’ll leave, I’ll leave it there. That’s my shameless plug.

Donovan Lara: Yeah. So I like WRC. I don’t watch it very often. It’s no [00:22:00] group B, but yeah. A hundred percent. So, you know, I’ve tried in, in, uh, I was in Europe one time and they were running, it’s Cyprus, right?

Where they run one of the races over there. Cause that was one of the, Corsica,

Crew Chief Eric: Cyprus, I mean, all over the place.

Donovan Lara: I was going to try to go over there, but, uh, you know, I’m, I think I’m more interested in, in driving that type of race. Target, Newfoundland. Is that the, the one up where they do the rally through the city up in Northern Canada somewhere?

Correct. I’d love to do that. I probably shouldn’t because I’d be the guy that hit the house. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that, but, uh, you know, I appreciate that, that kind of, that roasting. So

Crew Chief Eric: since we’re talking about that, have you seen the movie Love the Beast with Eric Bana?

Donovan Lara: Yeah, where he was, you know, a Ford or something that he used to work

Crew Chief Eric: Falcon.

Yes. And then he does target Tasmania in it and I won’t spoil it for anybody that hasn’t seen it. But if you’re a car enthusiast, I highly recommend this movie because it speaks to all of us as petrol heads and the passion. I mean, he wears all his emotions on his sleeve and it’s an amazing documentary.

If you haven’t seen it,

Donovan Lara: it’s great. I mean, that’s one of the few that [00:23:00] I’ve seen that, like you said, it’s really, it’s really passionate and you, it’s really, really great to see. It’s not like the John DeLorean movies that are out. Although some of those are pretty good. Have you seen the Alec Baldwin?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, I reviewed it.

There’s actually an article on our website about it.

Donovan Lara: The best part of it though. And I’ll keep the, you know, it’s at the end when, when the son says he should say, He says, and then they actually show it. I giggled out loud for about five minutes after that was hilarious.

Crew Chief Eric: I found it funny when the daughter of John DeLorean was like, do you know what DMC stands for?

It stands for destroyed my childhood, but no great film. But yeah, we reviewed that. We reviewed Shelby American and the Fangio documentary at the same time. And there’s an article on the website about that, but since we’re still geeking out about cars, let’s go with Brad’s favorite question.

Crew Chief Brad: You can only have three cars, sadly, on this desert island with coconuts and fruit and whatever Eric, you know, talks about when he, when he pitches this question, but you’ve got a three car garage.

You can only have three cars for the rest of your life. What would they be other than [00:24:00] three split window Corvettes? Only three.

Donovan Lara: That’s not, that’s not giving me a lot. Uh, you know, it changes all the time. I mean, right now, and I don’t have to think about them, but I can tell you one of them would be an Aston Martin DB five.

No question. Somebody just posted one on the site and it’s white. I haven’t seen a white one. I don’t think ever, I didn’t know they made a white one. I’d still have to go James Bond You know, silver, but you know, for me, when I look at a car, I appreciate all angles of it. And while I love that car, I have a little bit of a hang up in the back end, the way the back end comes together, you know, it’s almost kind of Auburn boat tail meets 50 something Cadillac, but still, you know, love the car.

It’s iconic Ferrari two 50, you know, Lusso is, is definitely up there. That car to me is just gorgeous. It’s incredible. Every aspect of it. And, you know, I like cars that I can just sit and look at. The Datsun that I mentioned earlier that I had, it was a 67, and I’m going to say short window because that’s what I want to say.

And for those that don’t know that, that just meant in 68, they went to the molded in pillar for the window. The 67 and before was just bolted on. So there was no support there. But you know what I loved about [00:25:00] that car? I loved so many angles of it, but the interior had toggle switches and, you know, the way the back end came together.

So that was a car that I would just, Look at, and it wasn’t a whole lot of fun to drive. I actually was pulling in the neighborhood one time with my father in law and his passenger door just managed to fling wide open for some reason. So, you know, they were those kinds of things. A radiator pipe was 90, but for my third, I’ll tell you what I’m feeling.

Although I could probably after this, tell you it’s going to be something different, but I’m thinking a Porsche GT one street, and I forget the German name, something strata, but we’ll, we’ll go there. I think that would be incredible. Now that I see that, maybe a McLaren F1?

Crew Chief Eric: See, now he’s leading into the million dollar man question.

If you had unlimited resources, and that’s to include buying the car and maintaining it, and you could only pick one car, and it could be anything, it could be a race car, it could be a street car, what would it be?

Donovan Lara: Well, I’ll tell you why I buy cars. Maybe I can help that help answer the question. I buy cars that I think are going to appreciate, right.

And cars that aren’t something that everybody has. And, you know, I know E30 M3s aren’t [00:26:00] exactly super limited, but obviously they’re, you know, they’re, they’re appreciating,

Crew Chief Eric: they just sold one on bring a trailer for a quarter million dollars, right.

Donovan Lara: I mean, they’re continuing to go up. They’re not super, super rare, but

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t know how much truth there is in that particular sale, but

Donovan Lara: well, even the M fives that I have, you know, I have two of them, um, I’ve always wanted them there, even though they’re more rare, they’re just not worth as much.

So they will be, I think, but for me, so that, that million dollar question. It would have to be something that I think was going to be just a super investment. So obviously I would say 250 GTO, right? That’s kind of crazy, but bringing it back semi realistic, you know, I think we’re still probably in the McLaren F1 or the Bugatti that kind of thing.

And then with all the one offs that are being created these days, You know, who knows? I mean, I know there’s a bunch of special Bugattis and the Lamborghini Veneno or, you know, that one, those kinds of things. I love those. So it’d have to be something very special like that. That was very, very low numbers.

And some of those are one of one or one of four expensive to start out [00:27:00] with. So, you know, it’s for the limited consumer and that’s something that’s just going to continue to appreciate over, you know, over time.

Crew Chief Eric: All right, Donovan, sexiest car of all time.

Donovan Lara: Uh, are we saying sexy because of curves? Are we saying speed?

Are we saying that

Crew Chief Brad: is up to you? It’s subjective.

Donovan Lara: Sexiest car. While I like the curvy cars, the two 50 Lusos and those things, I really like edgy car, you know, like the, like we talked about the Lambos and stuff to me, I think, uh, and this isn’t an all time, but I think, you know, when you get into the hurricanes and those with those really sharp edges, I just think those are sexy, man.

I think those are the cars that you pull up and everybody goes. Wow. Right. You know, you pull up in a, a nine 30 turbo, maybe one guy in the parking lot would go, okay, cool. Everybody else would be like, Oh, that’s just an old Porsche. I think that really exotic edgy design, I think is really, really sexy.

Crew Chief Eric: Every time somebody says that I just have one thing that comes to mind the F 40.

Donovan Lara: Well, that’s exactly, yeah, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. I mean, think about that car, right? It’s [00:28:00] not super curvy. It’s edgy. It’s there. Isn’t you’re right. That might be the sexiest car ever,

Crew Chief Eric: but it still looks good today.

Donovan Lara: And love. Some, some buddies of mine years ago, and this is pre garage riot. I’ve got some buddies that did well, right? They sold some businesses and we all raced together. Actually, there’s women’s and a champ car and a couple of them are worth worth a pretty penny. And I said, Hey, listen, guys, you know, I, this was right when the market for cars really started going crazy and everybody started buying them up.

You know, at the time I bought a 73, nine 11 for 8, 000, you know, and it needed a little bit of work, but you couldn’t do that now. But so I kind of saw some of that rise in some of these cars. I emailed these guys and said, Hey, look, Here’s five cars I think you need to keep an eye on and they were in varying ranges of price.

You know, some of them, Hey, we want to work a deal and, you know, maybe I’ll babysit them and insure them and keep them for you. You know, that kind of thing. Let’s look at them. So, you know, some of them again, we’re in some older 911s, but a couple of cars on that list two that are most important. One was the Mercedes 190 two, right?

At the time there was one for sale in Paris for [00:29:00] 70, 75, 000, I think. And, you know, there were only 500 of those made. And I said, guys, you got to buy. This car, this very one or one like it, it’ll be worth more. I think now that one didn’t appreciate quite as much. I think I saw one for two 50 sell and bring a trailer a couple of weeks ago, but still, you know, not a bad turn on investment, but the main one on there was the F 40 and at the time the F 40 was selling for three, three 50, which was the price of a new events door at the time, And I said, I don’t know, you know, to me, F fifties were seven 50 and those were still a million and I don’t know why the F 40 took so long, but you know, I was like, guys, one of you needs to snap up an F 40 and they’re all big car guys and they didn’t do it.

And of course now I haven’t checked the price lately. I know they’re over a million bucks. But can you imagine if you went to a Lambo dealer and you have your choice of a brand new Aventador or a Ferrari F 40 same price, I mean, it’s a no brainer. I don’t know. I’d

Crew Chief Brad: buy the F 50. Personally.

Donovan Lara: Oh, I love the F50, but yeah, I mean,

Crew Chief Brad: Eric is not a fan.

Donovan Lara: No,

Crew Chief Brad: no, no, no, no.

Donovan Lara: You never see [00:30:00] them. Do you guys ever see them anywhere? No, because they’re

Crew Chief Brad: ugly. That’s why I’m asking. I’ve seen them on YouTube all the time. That’s it. I don’t know. I’ve never seen any of these cars.

Crew Chief Eric: Unfortunately, the F50 is quintessential nineties, right? Like everything else that became bloated and rounded in the nineties.

The F50 is the same thing. Yes. It’s all mine. Well, it’s roots hark back to the F40, but when you look at the F40, you know, it’s one of the last cars that Enzo put his hands on, or at least was involved with, you know, even at a high level within Ferrari, you look at it and you go. Right. It’s still screams Ferrari.

You look at the F 50 and you’re like, did Alto Bianchi design this? Did the guys at Fiat design is like, what is this? Right. It doesn’t look like all the Ferraris that came before it. It’s just too Mobius and marshmallowy and whatever, in my opinion. And the Enzo is way too angular. It screams to the early two thousands where everything became, you know, wind tunnel ask, and it’s never changed since that point forward.

So the F 40, like the nine 59 retains [00:31:00] those cutting edge designs. But also they’re ageless, right? You look at them and another car that’s in that category or two, rather the Supra, the gen four Supras, they still look good today. They look very modern. And the other one is the Audi R8 another car that you can’t tell me what year it is when you look at an R8, they’re all kind of the same other than the newest ones with the, you know, the goofy Lexus grill that they’ve put on these things, but the early R8s.

They still look good today. Right? So that’s just my stance on things. I always look at when I’m looking at a car like that, I’m looking at a car that can stand the test of time. And one of those happens to be, let’s say, if we’re looking really retro and it comes up a lot on this show is the E type Jag.

It’s a car that you look at and you go, wow, it still looks good today. 65 years later or whatever, you know, you’re like, it’s an amazing vehicle. It’s a piece of moving art, you know, but let’s turn that on its head a bit. What do you think is the ugliest car?

Donovan Lara: There’s too many. I wasn’t thinking our conversation about [00:32:00] Ferraris.

There’s some

Crew Chief Eric: ugly Ferraris too. Don’t even get me started on

Donovan Lara: that. Like, especially like the late sixties ones and the weird, some of the three thirties and the three 65

Crew Chief Eric: and I can’t give you one better. And it’s on a previous episode, the Monday LT.

Donovan Lara: I don’t understand that market at all. I don’t understand.

You know, when they were 15,000, nobody wanted them. And I still don’t want one, but now, you know, they’re 80, some of ’em are 80, $90,000. And I, I don’t get it. I mean, I, I never liked the 3 0 8 either. And I know that’s heresy to a lot of people, but last fever to me it was too, it was too, commercial isn’t the word, but everybody liked it.

So I’m like, let’s zigzag a little bit. Let’s do something a little different. But, you know, to me the, the compliment to that though was the 2 88 GTO. And what I was gonna say a minute ago was you think about the way that. Exclusive line progress, 288 GTO, F40, F50, Enzo, and beyond. They for sure got less attractive as they went on.

And while the 288 GTO, you could argue whether that’s better [00:33:00] looking or not as good looking as the F40, I think they were really close.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, they’re, they’re basically the same car underneath.

Donovan Lara: Right.

Crew Chief Eric: But the 308 coming from the Dino line, but also carrying the lines of the 288. Cause they’re all related during that time period.

The one thing about the 308 though, yes, it is the pop star of the eighties, you know, thanks to Magnum and a lot of other stuff, but it’s right up there with the 944 and the E30 M3. I mean, of that type. Quattro and the RX seven and a lot of other cars that I mean, they’re all in that same boat as kind of the pop star heroes of the European sports car world.

As, as that was changing from the Brits really having cornered the market with all the roadsters and everything they built the Germans and the Italians kind of swept in and said, look at what we have, you know, technology is superior kind of deal, but so I feel, yeah, but you know, and there’s plenty of ugly Ferraris

Donovan Lara: there are a lot, but you know, I think it’s the same too.

When you think about the DeLorean, right. It wasn’t cool to like the DeLorean. Now it’s sort of becoming cool to like it, but it was kind of that way. And I think for me, the three Oh eight, it was the bumpers. When you get one that has Euro bumpers on it, one of the early [00:34:00] cars, and I don’t really like the, the GTBs, right?

I like the, just the hard roof. I think that looks a lot better. And I actually preferred the three 28 over that.

Crew Chief Eric: I drove one.

Donovan Lara: Which one?

Crew Chief Eric: The 328 GTS QV

Donovan Lara: actually drove them onto y’all about a year ago. And through a sprinkler system, it was a guy who was like, Hey, look, you want to drive, man. It drove amazing.

But you know, what’s funny is we have a friend, some, some buddies of mine. We got a mutual friend that we kid. He’s the home of the unloved Ferraris, right? He’s got a three 48, which that’s a great car. I love those. I do too. But now he’s looking for the, the GT four, which I always thought was pretty cool. I like that car better than three Oh eight.

I mean, honestly, but yeah, I think there’s a lot of them. And you know, my fear is always, I looked at buying a three 55 at one point, which I think is a gorgeous car, but you know, you start to hear the don’t do that because all the exhaust manifolds crack and this, that actually on Jalopnik, there was an article, a guy bought one and he was like, here’s why you don’t want to own a three 55 and went through.

I don’t remember now, but he had it for a very short period of time and spent like 15, 000 repairing it or something before he got rid of it. But, but yeah, I think they’re great. I think that the [00:35:00] sixties Ferraris, I kind of lose track of, you said, the three thirties and three 65s, cause I didn’t particularly think they were that good looking.

But as far as ugliest car, I mean, it’d be easy to say, Oh, it’s the Pacer. It’s the Gremlin or one of those, but you know, the Aztec is in there too. I don’t know, man. Honestly, I think the Panamera is hideous. I don’t like that car at all.

Crew Chief Brad: Let

Donovan Lara: me throw a car

Crew Chief Brad: out at

Donovan Lara: you.

Crew Chief Brad: The Chevrolet HHR.

Donovan Lara: My wife wants one of those.

So I can’t totally, I totally agree, but no, no, she wants the SSR, the pickup truck one. The HHR is the, the, uh, the milkman. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Those are pretty bad. And what’s worse is it was just a ripoff, right. From the, the other PT. Yeah, PT Cruiser. So

Crew Chief Eric: I’m so glad you can share in this long running joke we have about the HHR.

It goes back a long ways, but this is good. I’m glad you’re, you’re confirming everything.

Donovan Lara: Ugly car, but you know, there’s some European only cars that are pretty hideous too.

Crew Chief Eric: Let’s kind of flip things around a little [00:36:00] bit because car culture is changing, right? And so we reminisce and we get nostalgic and we wax poetic about a lot of these older cars and they’re beautiful, but those days are changing, right?

You’re well versed in the car world, but if you had to buy a new 2021 model, what would it be?

Donovan Lara: Uh, you know, obviously I’m going to skew towards Porsche and BMW, but I’ll, I’ll, I’ll do something different for the sake of this conversation. You know, I, I’ve come close a couple of times to putting a deposit down on a Cybertruck just because they’re so different.

And, you know, to me, that’s the DeLorean of, of our era. I just think it’s cool. And you know, it’s crazy, you know, I don’t know if you guys have, what experiences you had with Teslas, but, uh, those buddies that I had, those things are pretty cool. Ridiculous. You know, I got the buddy that’s got the, what is it?

The zero to 16, 2. 2 seconds. And the technology in those cars are incredible. When we take them over the mountain, you know, they’re able to turn on all of their data so they can tell what the temperature of each of their tires are. And, you know, all their, their G’s and all that. So it’s just really incredible.

But what’s funny about that [00:37:00] too, is I don’t know how much that truck weighs, but I have to imagine it’s probably five or 6, 000 pounds, because that’s about what the cars are. But the triple motor one will, they claim we’ll do zero to 60 and like 2. 2, 2. 3. So. I don’t know why you’d want to go that fast in three or four tons worth of steel.

But, uh, but that one to me would be more for the kids, you know, Hey, it’s cool, you know, dad’s got this truck or whatever, but problem with modern day cars, I think though, is, you know, and it’s going to sound very Jeremy Clarkson of me, but like that 1980 BMW, I have, you know, my first car was a three 20. I worked two jobs over the summer in college to buy it.

And it was, you know, it was a decade old or something or however old at the time. But. I bought this one because it was another one of those cars, but you get in that car. It’s purely mechanical. I mean, it has power steering and things, but it may be, it’s psychological, but I just feel like I’m driving a car.

It’s not fast, but I’m not worried about, you know, the radio. And I’m not worried about, you know, how bright the headlights are and all the other crap in it, Bluetooth. I just want to drive the car and it feels [00:38:00] really good. It’s small, you know, cars these days are big. I don’t know if you guys have seen a Camaro behind a, an SUV, but they’re about as wide as each other, which is really crazy, but you know, in two, I’m disillusioned a little bit.

Like when you look at Porsche, for example, you know, like I said, I love Porsche, but you know, baseline 11 is a hundred thousand dollars now, and that’s just Kudos to them, right. To being able to have that kind of market. And it seems like this has been the story of my life. All the cars that I want to buy are just outside of my reach, you know, financially, whether it’s, you know, you know, whatever it is in the days, in the early days, when I first started working, it was, I was 20, 000 shy of the car that I wanted, or, you know, the one that I really wanted.

And now it seems I’m missing them by a hundred thousand dollars. I mean, it just seems to be this huge jump in cars. And, um, You know, it’s hard. So, you know, I’d love to have a brand new 911 GT3 RS. The 07 RS, uh, green on black is one of my dream cars. That’s, that’s my fourth garage entry there. But you know, you look at the new ones and they’re, you know, quarter million dollars and [00:39:00] there are a lot of them on the road

Crew Chief Brad: and I don’t know how people are doing it.

What do you think of the EV revolution that’s taking over the world?

Donovan Lara: You know, we’re going to have to go

Crew Chief Brad: there, right? I mean, there’s no question. And

Donovan Lara: I’m a fan for somebody else to own one, like my buddies that have them. I’m like, that’s great for you, but I always want that. Petrol, you know, I always want those cars.

I want the smell. I want the sound. And you know, when you’re next to somebody in a Tesla that gives it, you know, full beans and it sounds like a remote control car that just, to me, that takes away half of what it is to be. I don’t want to say a car enthusiast, cause that’s not fair, but it takes away half of the appreciation that we have for the love of the sport.

You know, you go to the races to hear the cars, you know, as much as in smell that, uh, You don’t go, and that’s my problem with formula E. I don’t know if you guys have watched those races or not. I can’t take them seriously. And I appreciate there’s some real drivers and some real technology in there, but no sound, you know, I’m just, I can’t get excited about it, but they’ll eventually go there.

You know, for me, it’ll probably be, you know, daily driver. And when I mentioned the cyber truck, that would probably replace the Explorer, so it wouldn’t be my, you know, [00:40:00] BMW replacement, but it’s fun. I mean, I think the tech is really cool. And if it’s not a car that I’m trying to buy to impress anybody or, you know, Really have the fastest thing on the road, although they’re very fast.

You know, if it’s really just kind of a function of driving, I can see myself going that route.

Crew Chief Brad: And so a follow up question to that is what do you think of the new Hummer? The new all electric Hummer way overpriced.

Donovan Lara: I don’t know how they’re going to do it. I mean, what it’s a hundred and a half, I think.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. It’s ridiculous. It’s like one 12 or something like that starting for the day one edition.

Donovan Lara: I think it looks cool, but I think GM is in, I don’t know if we have any GM people listen to this, but they don’t understand their market. I mean, I think they’re assuming right off the bat that they’re going to sell to to all these executives.

But, you know, in a topic that’s going around garage right right now, you know, we talked about Tesla getting rid of their 35, 000 base model, which I didn’t even know happened. But you know, the fact or that they had one, but the fact that it’s obtainable for Everybody, you know, think about Henry Ford, right?

That was his model. That was Volkswagen’s model. I won’t say by who, but we all know, but you [00:41:00] know, the idea that everybody could have an affordable car. And I think, you know, you want to come in high brand like that, but I think if they had done that with Cadillac, maybe they’d have gotten away with it. And to

Crew Chief Eric: your point, I think the Lyric is priced less than the Hummer is.

So right there, it doesn’t, it just doesn’t make sense. Right. But as, as we’ve talked about on the previous, you know, drive thru episodes, I think there’s speculation that the Hummer is a rebranded, what is it? The Rivian?

Crew Chief Brad: It looks very similar to the, the Rivian pickup truck.

Crew Chief Eric: So, and I’ve said this many times before, I think GM’s late to the game.

On a lot of things across the board, they were late to adopt hybrid, which they still really aren’t there. They’re late to adopt the shift in the market. Like you said, I don’t think they know their market. And now I feel like they’re lagging behind. And so, you know, I have some conspiracy theories there myself about, you know, maybe they’re strategizing, maybe they’re waiting to see everybody else make the mistakes so they don’t have to spend the money to make those mistakes, you know, that kind of thing.

And that is tactically very, very smart, but. That’s 10 years [00:42:00] too late at this point.

Donovan Lara: Well, I was gonna say, especially when you look at the technology part of it, and you know, I’ve heard people in various businesses say, we don’t want to be the leader. We want to be a close second. Like you said, let everybody make the mistakes.

But, and I’m not an EV expert by any means, but you know, from what I’ve seen, Tesla is so far ahead of everybody else right now. I mean, even just the cool feature of it, you know, there’s the feature where you can turn on. So it talks to you in certain, you know, or, you know, whatever that stuff is. It’s just, Cool to be in that car, right?

It’s not just an EV. It does a lot of really cool things for you. So eventually there’s going to be EVs all over. I mean, we’re seeing them pop up every day, but you know, I think the problem too with GM, and I think it’s a problem with manufacturers across the board, but if you build crap and it’s ugly.

You’re in trouble, right? If you build crap and it looks good, you got a chance. I mean, look at the turnaround in Ford in the early 2k, right? They didn’t have a lot of great looking cars, but they started working with, you know, Ford Europe and started really making some really nice looking cars, which they pretty much don’t make cars anymore, but look at, he has turned around.

Now they’re not just [00:43:00] this, you know, 6, 000 crap box. They actually have some nice looking cars. And I think people buy with their eyes. And the problem with Hummer is I don’t know that that’s a spectacular looking vehicle. I mean, to me, it looks like a brick thought I saw the last time I saw it. I think the headlights or something, say spell Hummer and the grill or something like that.

That’s a nice touch. It’s not very obvious, but I also think, you know, oddly enough, I think that’s an issue with Tesla. I don’t think Tesla’s cars are particularly good looking. They’re pretty plain. And to give you context, you know, we go on these mountain runs and we’re stopping on the side of the road.

I’ve had people comment about my M3 and people have commented about this car and this car. People don’t even look at the Tesla’s like they don’t even bother. And I think even if people know they don’t care because it’s basically a sedan, you know, a family car. No,

Crew Chief Eric: it’s an, it’s an appliance is what it is.

It’s like every other dishwasher in somebody’s house. You look at it and go, yeah, they got a dishwasher. Big deal.

Donovan Lara: So if the, if the Hummer looked great, I think they could do, they could do a little bit more there, but I don’t think it’s quite.

Crew Chief Eric: And I don’t want to get on a conversation about that. The Wagoneer, but what I do want to ask you [00:44:00] about is the C8 Corvette.

Donovan Lara: I like it in what, what will be the zeo six trim kind of thing, but that’s been my problem with, you know, the C seven and those other cars in the base model trim, I think it looks good, but I think it’s an amazing car and the fact that they’re selling it for 60 grand, I think is incredible. And I thought I read an article that said they’re actually losing money, money on them or breaking even at 60 grand, but 60 grand for a three second car is, is incredible and awesome for them.

I mean, they finally built a world car that people respect now the design. It’s not necessarily just the gold chain where, and, you know. Button down, hairy chest kind of guy, but I think they got some ways to go. I mean, we’re just talking pure design. I don’t think they resolve the way the backend comes together.

It looks like, you know, they backed in really hard into a Camaro or something. So, and you know, you’ve seen how many times they changed the taillights on the Camaro. It’s like every year. And I think they’re still trying to figure that out. But I saw a couple of them at Amelia Island this year. I saw a gumball blue one that was gorgeous.

They had an orange one and they had one of the semi race trim. I don’t know if it was an [00:45:00] actual race car, but they had it made up that way. I think it’s a beautiful car and I wouldn’t be ashamed to own or drive one at all. I think they’re awesome.

Crew Chief Eric: So I think to your point, you’re, you’ve made the same analogy.

I think I’ve paid several times about the Corvette and it’s posterior. They Bob tailed it off and then they said, okay, or the pencil broke. I don’t know which one, what it was, but yeah, it just doesn’t look right. And unfortunately for me, Characteristically. It kind of resembles all the rest of them, McLarens.

I mean, from the front, they all kind of look the same now, which is unfortunate because you know, the saying right now is there’s only one design that cheats the wind, but okay, but I don’t know. I won’t go there. It’s not worth it.

Donovan Lara: But it does go back to, I mean, I was talking about before that, and not all of my cars, I would say, or beauty queens necessarily to everybody, but you know, a car that, You could have in the garage and sit there and just stare at it for half an hour, you know, like you’re watching TV.

I don’t know that that the C8 is there just yet, but you know, big, big spoilers fix a lot of things, right? You know, you think about some of the sexiest Corvettes I’ve ever seen [00:46:00] were, you know, some C7s, you know, Z06 is lowered with the front lip and the spoiler in the back and not crazy, but you know, you lower any car and put nice wheels on it.

It’s going to help out. But. I just think it needs that touch. And even the race car, you know, the one they raced recently, they’re racing this year, I think looks fantastic. Yeah, you’re right. It there’s, there’s a little bit back there and I’m, I’m sure they’ll continue to fix that. You know, it is interesting, the problems they’re having.

There’s one of our social influencers took hers out and it caught on fire this weekend at the track. So, you know, between that and some of the other issues they’re having, they still have some things to work out and I can’t, and for everybody listening, I love GM, you know, come from a GM family and all that.

But, you know, I think that they do have some, some things to fix and a little bit of ways to go on some of that.

Crew Chief Eric: So folks, if you liked this conversation, this is what you can come to expect when you join GarageRiot. So let’s talk a little bit more about what it’s like to become a member.

Donovan Lara: Yeah, it’s pretty straightforward.

You know, you go to the site, garageriot. com and give us your information. So, you know, it’s your login and things, but it’s your social security. No, I’m kidding. But really it’s just, you know, we ask you for a little bit [00:47:00] of information about who you are, right? Just. So we know who our members are and then you tell us what kind of car you’ve got.

And that’s it. I mean, it’s pretty simple for the, for the apps, obviously you have to go to the app store or Google play and download it and go from there, but try to keep it simple, you know, don’t believe in, you know, a lot of the extra information and things. And we know a lot of that information is, so we know, you know, okay, well, where are you at in the country?

That’s good for us. Right. So we can say, well, you know, you’re in Atlanta. We’ve got a lot of people there. We can, we can target some ads to you, but it’s really that simple. So are there any membership dues or fees or anything like that? Nope. Totally free. And, uh, yeah, I, you know, we, we had talked about something like that early on, a subscription model, but we don’t wanna do that.

You know, it’s not really, we’re not trying to make money off of our members. That’s not what it’s about. You know, you mentioned a second ago about, you know, that kind of grassroots approach in that, in the community, my business partner Heath. feels it as much as we do and more, right? He wants to help everybody in our community, almost to a fault in that, you know, he, he would give it all away for free if he could just to help everybody out, which is great because when you think [00:48:00] about we’re trying to get the word out, we’re trying to help people get the word out.

So however we can help somebody and they can help us as kind of how we’ve always moved and you know, the, we had, uh, the local chapter of the American Legion come to us. We were doing a show. They were asking, you know, how did you put this on? And, you know, what do we need to do? We’re going to do our first show.

And we ended up just working with them and helping them put on their show. And, you know, obviously didn’t take any money out of it. That wasn’t why we were there. It was really to help further that car enthusiast market and help people, you know, continue on with, you know, helping other people in the community.

So that’s really what it’s about. And, you know, our car, we had car shows and, you know, we gave away a thousand dollar grand prize. You know, it was unheard of in the area. I don’t think anybody did that. It was trophies and things. But again, to us, it was. Hey, if you spent a decade of your life and you spent a hundred thousand dollars on your car, you should get something back for that.

You know, we’re, we’re here seeing all the work that you’ve done. You’re sharing it with the world. That’s awesome. You’re sharing with us. We want to give something back to you. So it really is that kind of grassroots. Let’s all take care of each other kind of feeling. And we intentionally do that and we don’t [00:49:00] ever want it to be corporate.

Um, You know, it’s, it’s just cold, but you know, we want to be, cause we’re in the trenches too, right? We’re, we’re at the racetracks and we’re at the car meets and we’re, we’re online and chatting with everybody too. So we’re just one, one of everybody else.

Crew Chief Brad: Have you noticed or have you checked the numbers and in the COVID times, you know, everybody’s feeling to get that fix that car show fix that event fix or whatever.

But everybody’s doing it virtually. Have you noticed any of your numbers increasing because of COVID and people not being able to go out and still trying to get that car fix?

Donovan Lara: It’s crazy times. Obviously, it’s been interesting. We’ve seen various spikes, but you know, for us, we look at it two ways, right? We look at winter time data and then we look at summer season data.

Oddly enough, we pick up at the beginning of each season. So about right now, we start to pick up members because people are inside, they can’t drive their cars. So they’re, they’re not as busy. Jonesing for something online, right? I want to talk and just be part of it. But you know, COVID is, is a hole during that period.

We didn’t [00:50:00] necessarily see any peaks and valleys. I think we saw more activity as far as, you know, the users that were sitting at home, but you know, our numbers, I say that not that we didn’t get any activity. I mean, our numbers have continued to increase across that span as well. So honestly, we probably wouldn’t have noticed a spike being more spiky than before because it’s, we’re exponentially growing, thankfully.

So. COVID may have had something to do with it, you know, maybe silver lining, but I don’t know. Maybe it’s just luck.

Crew Chief Eric: So Donovan, are there any perks to being a member of Garage Riot?

Donovan Lara: Other than hanging out with the coolest car people on earth?

Crew Chief Eric: Of course.

Donovan Lara: I mean, yeah, I mean, it is what you make it, right? It’s really about being able to, to get in to the mix with everybody.

I mean, as far as, you know, are you going to get paid? You know, that kind of thing? No, but I think it’s just really about. Opening your eyes to your community. So, you know, going back to what we talked about in the, in the beginning, you know, imagine somebody moves here from, from California and, you know, they’re going to try to find people to blend in with and car clubs to get involved with.

And, you know, more importantly, where [00:51:00] we are, you know, we’re not far from the mountains. So a lot of mountain runs and things. And, you know, again, it’s really important, right? I don’t think people. Think about it at the time, but let’s say that I’m a mini owner. I am a mini owner, but let’s say that I I’m new into town and I, and I joined a group or something, maybe I get the gist of what’s going on.

Maybe I don’t, but there’s a whole other world of, you know, the 98 other percent. that have other brands that are out there doing a lot of things, right? So if they’re posting on garage ride about, Hey, we’ve got a, a meet this weekend, or we’ve got a mountain run this weekend, they may not have heard that in their mini group on Facebook.

So it really, I mean, communication is key in all of this. So I think that’s probably the biggest benefit of it all.

Crew Chief Eric: But what I wanted to clarify on the perks, discounts, anything like that for like becoming a member.

Donovan Lara: Yeah. I mean, so we work with, you know, the, the sponsors that we have. And, you know, if there’s a discount available, we’ll provide that to them.

You know, that’s really based on the relationship that we have with whichever vendor that is. So we have a couple shops in town that do some advertising with us and they give discounts based on the fact, you know, you’re a Garage Riot member. [00:52:00] So it really expands globally. We don’t, Really have a perks program, although that’s something we might look at in the future.

When we were doing pretty big events, you know, we had discounts on, uh, entry fees and those kinds of things. So it’s always there, you know, and we have graduate merchandise it’s on Amazon and, and, you know, we have it on the site. We’re going to bring some of that back too. So there, there will continue to be that, that aspect of perks there as well.

Crew Chief Eric: We noticed that during the signup process, there’s different types of accounts that you choose from during the registration process. So what’s that used for?

Donovan Lara: Yeah, right now. So, you know, I mentioned that we have a lot of things kind of behind the scenes that we have developed and either not launched them just yet, or we’re kind of holding back for the right time.

That’s really about understanding the different types of users that we have. So if you’re just a person, right, you come on there and give a personal account. If you’re, say, a car dealership, You know, we would want you to come on there again, you know, us trying to help everybody out, right. We would want you to come on in, in your profile, be able to display your inventory or at least your website and your phone number, for [00:53:00] example, something simple like that, that your personal profile wouldn’t necessarily have.

So it’s a way for us to identify kind of the different needs of the profile, but also let the community understand that, Oh, this is a dealership, right? This isn’t a person, this is somebody that I can go to and now I continue to go back to their profile and get more information about what they do.

Crew Chief Eric: As an example, if I signed up as a business, does that automatically entitle me to any sort of like advertising or anything like that?

How does that work?

Donovan Lara: No, not necessarily. Not yet. I mean, you know, all of our, our sponsor relationships are different. So, you know, we talk to, you know, depending on what they want to do. So we have some people that want to Part of our marketing and everything that we do. So anytime we send out a physical mail, or if we’re in a car show and giving out things, they want to be part of that.

And then there’s some people that just are happy having their, uh, their banner on our website. So we, at least right now, still try to have a one to one relationship with all of our sponsors and make sure that we’re, we’re doing the best we can for them. There’s not really a one size fits all. And, and, and we don’t want to have that again.

It’s, you know, everybody in their business has different [00:54:00] needs. So, you know, we want to figure out how we can use that and leverage.

Crew Chief Eric: So you mentioned several times events and events is always kind of a trigger word for us because there’s all sorts of different types of, you know, automotive events out there.

So what kinds of events does garage riot put on and where?

Donovan Lara: So early on, yeah, we, we used it as a way to get the word out. So we did car shows and I mentioned the thousand dollar grand prize and you know, that wasn’t by accident, right? It was partly to get people to go, Hey, wait a second. This sounds like a good place to go, but also, like I said, to give back to people.

So, We did that pretty regularly. I think our first year we had one show, it was called summer riot and it went really well. And then the next year we did a summer riot, we did classic riots and, um, we had a couple others and those were really starting to kind of segment the different types, right?

Obviously we had one that was Euro riot that was just for European cars. And then, and you know, it was interesting in doing that, you know, just in the car show world, you have people that show up and you know, member wise, we have people that there’s a couple of people on there that have, you know, million [00:55:00] dollars in cars.

And then we’ve got some people that, you know, it’s their first car, right? You know, they did what they could. It’s probably a three or 4, 000 car. And we noticed that to come into some of these car shows. And we had this really wide variety of people. And, you know, I don’t know if you guys have been, you know, entered your car in a car show, but you know, sometimes you go in and as soon as you pull up, you’re like, I shouldn’t be here, right?

You know, this guy’s got this car that looks like it was done for SEMA. And I, you know, I’m in kind of a, A really clean bone stock car. So we tried to break that apart and start, you know, leveling the playing field. So yeah, you may not get that grand prize, but at least, you know, you’re going to be competitive in whatever space you’re in,

Crew Chief Eric: but so in the, in the track world, you know, the car show in the paddock is very different because if you look and you go, Hey man, you got straight body panels, you’re doing pretty good now, and I’m joking, right.

But there are no beauty queens in the paddock, you know, generally speaking. I mean, there are some very. Prestigious cars that do show up, you know, McLarens and Corvettes and Porsches and that kind of stuff.

Crew Chief Brad: Not in the instructor run groups.

Crew Chief Eric: No, not at all. And not [00:56:00] at the club racing events or the time trials, the guys that are really going after it.

You’re like, well, that’s cool. Your roll bar is three colors. That’s neat. You know? So it’s, it’s, it’s just a whole different ballgame. So I don’t think any of our cars would win any awards. Other than the fact that they made it there and they run, but, but, uh, so what other kinds of events, cause you talked about, you know, mountain drives and things like that.

Is that like a drive and dine? What else, what else you got going on?

Donovan Lara: Yeah, we do that. The, so the mountain runs are a little more grassroots. It’s Hey guys, we’re all going to the mountains this weekend. You want to come? And, uh, you know, we do those, uh, we were also doing, it was every third Saturday, we did just kind of a casual get together at night, you know, people get up in the morning and they go to cars and coffee and, and, uh, you know, You know, I don’t want to get up at four 30 in the morning, just so I get a car, you know, a park in space.

So it was a way just for people to get together and chill out and relax and appreciate each other’s cars. Beyond that, we haven’t done any kind of formal racing or any series like that. I mean, to me at this point, I think that’s best left to the experts, you know, and we’re trying to keep our reach still manageable.

[00:57:00] And that’s what I meant to earlier by, you know, When we launched the site, you could do everything under the sun and it wasn’t manageable. So we kind of narrowed down and, you know, maybe we’ll get there one day, but you know, you guys are the experts for that. So we wouldn’t want to trample on any toes there.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, that’s why we’re here to help. Right. But that’s cool. So with your mountain pass runs, are those orchestrated or is it just kind of a lead follow thing? And I have a reason for asking this question. So.

Donovan Lara: When you say orchestrated as far as Meaning,

Crew Chief Eric: are they, are they like a time distance kind of thing?

Are they planned out? Is there a route? Is it like a Gymkhana? Because this all falls actually under a motorsport discipline known as road rally. So that’s why I was curious to see if they were slightly more orchestrated, or if it’s just a lead follow type of convoy to a destination.

Donovan Lara: No, they’re more, they’re more casual than that.

Yeah. The last one we went on, we had a couple of Teslas and we had some guys with really loud exhausts. And, you know, we, we toured through the mountains and try to find different paths. And honestly, you know, we do about as much stand there and talk about, you know, cars and everything else is, is we can, [00:58:00] so there’s one particular route that we take a lot and we’ll zip over the mountain as quickly as we can.

And then at the end, there’s a pull off and we’ll stop. And we’ll just get out and, you know, just BS for half an hour and watch all the cars that go by and then we’ll get back in and shoot back over the mountain. And, you know, so it’s really a social thing.

Crew Chief Brad: And speaking of, you know, mountain drives and shooting up over back, back and forth over the mountain, how far are you from tail of the dragon?

Donovan Lara: From here somewhere, two and a half, three hours. I was just there with a group three or four weeks ago. So not bad.

Crew Chief Brad: GTM is planning a trip next, probably next fall to Tale of the Dragon. So we’ll definitely, you know, keep it, we should do it as

Crew Chief Eric: a joint thing. I mean, why not? Yeah,

Crew Chief Brad: exactly.

Donovan Lara: Yeah, I was up when we were up there, I took a buddy of mine and some other people and we shot across, we came from the east side and we took some twisty roads to get up there and we started out and I was in my E30 M3 that has a slight exhaust leak slide is being generous.

So, you know, you can smell, is

Crew Chief Eric: [00:59:00] that like the exhaust leak at the track where we cut the mufflers off? And

Donovan Lara: this is, you know, it’s, it’s funny. So when I bought the car and that’s the second E30 M3 I’ve had. And the first one I thought was going to kill me from the smell to the guy had done a lot of, you know, he put an Alcantara headliner in it and I think the glue, you know, it burned my eyes every time I drive that car.

So I got rid of it, but this one, when I bought it, the guy goes, yeah. He said, listen, they have a tendency to kind of back out their exhaust manifold bolts. So you have to have that tightened up. I’ve found nobody else that has ever heard of that. I’ve talked to some of the shops around here. They’re like, you’re crazy.

So this one though, for whatever reason smells like exhaust. So I’d been in at the two, three hours to get up there. We took some curbies. It was awesome. We got up, went over the dragon, you know, went West over the dragon, stopped for a second, came East. But when we came East, we were on, you know, super party twisties.

And I happened to look down and mess with the fan on the AC to turn it down a little bit. And when I looked back up, I was, you know, obviously going into it. To a corner and that was it. I was car sick from that point on. And, you know, it was that instant, you [01:00:00] know, then the exhaust on top of it. So when we got to the other side, we stopped, there’s two little stores there and I stopped in one and I told everybody, I’ve just got to sit.

Just let me sit for a minute, went and got some water and, uh, just had to chill out, but I was not feeling well. And we left and I actually wore my mask in the car, you know, my, my COVID era mask and had the windows half down. And I was still out of it for about another 30, 45 minutes. It was crazy. So. I won’t do that the next time I’ll make sure that I get my exhaust leak fixed and run with the windows down.

Crew Chief Eric: So Donovan, that’s all really cool. And you know, we’ll, we’ll see what, what next year holds. And obviously for all of us, it’s still very much a crapshoot as to what the schedule looks like and how things are going to turn out. So let’s hope for the better for everybody. But since we’re speaking of roadmaps, what’s on the roadmap for garage riot, any new features you want to share outside of the my garage thing, anything else coming that we should be looking forward to on the platform?

Donovan Lara: Going back. So it’s one of those, you know, it took us about a year and a half to get up and running. And then, you know, live we went, it’s kind of a beta launch and, uh, it’s been a constant improvement from there, but, you [01:01:00] know, we waited a little bit, probably a little longer than we should have waiting for it to be finished.

And of course it’s never finished, right? We’ve always got something we’re developing and working on. And even still it’s been, it’s been live for about four years in this iteration. Yeah, I think the, the garage is probably the nearest to completion. Um, you know, we’re constantly doing updates and it’s, it’s a lot of sleepless nights right now, we’re actually going through a server migration that I’m hoping doesn’t take the site down the next few days.

You know, we have developed some other things that’ll bring that on. We’ve got a, my garage feature coming where you can really show off your car and what you’ve done to it and be proud of it and share it with the world. We also have, you know, I mentioned we’re on Amazon, but, uh, we’ve got a YouTube channel.

We’ve been kicking up for the past couple of months. I think we posted our fifth or sixth video today. Uh, so that’s going, those come out about every couple of weeks to check us out there, but, you know, constant improvements. We’re always doing that for, you know, we need more room. We need more storage space and bandwidth.

So the garage. Uh, my garage as it’s called at the moment, I think is the most exciting. And like I said, you know, it’s going to be a chance for you [01:02:00] to tell us about your car, put your specs in, if you’ve modified it, your track times, where you were, what you ran, you know, those kinds of things. So it’s really, it is your chance to shine as a, as a car enthusiast.

And, you know, you can turn it around and go, boom, here you go. Here’s everything about my car and I can share it off. And if I want to see, you know, your fastest lap at road Atlanta, I’ll just check out your profile and it’ll show me

Crew Chief Eric: where do people go to find out more about garage riot? Can they contact you once they’ve signed up?

What’s your handle?

Donovan Lara: Yeah. So obviously the URL is garage riot. com. You know, we’ve got the apps you just search for in the app stores at garage riot, but yes, I am black M five on there if you guys want to ring me up.

Crew Chief Eric: So as we’re kind of closing out the segment on garage ride itself, are there any sponsors or anybody you’d like to thank?

Partnership? You guys, obviously. Hey, thank you guys.

Donovan Lara: Yeah. Beyond that. I mean, we’ve got local shout outs to those guys, so hopefully they’re all listening, but, uh, we’ve got some shops coming online here. Real soon that, uh, by the time this, uh, goes live, hopefully they’ll be on, but, uh, we’ll have to wait and [01:03:00] see on some of them.

Dunkin Donuts. There you go. There’s one

Crew Chief Eric: and rock auto. I’ve noticed as well.

Donovan Lara: Well, actually, you know, let me say something for those guys. Those guys have been great. So, you know, they get on there and post and they’ll post, uh, discounts on there often, and, you know, they’re active members of our community, which is really great.

You don’t expect that from. You know, a business like that. So whoever, and you know, we haven’t talked to anybody on the phone, only email, whoever that person is, or those multiple people are, they stay on top of it and really engage with our website, which is really, really cool to have a vendor of that, that level.

Crew Chief Eric: So Donovan, we are super excited to continue the partnership that we’ve started with Garage Riot. And we have a couple things planned. We don’t want to give away all the spoilers. We’re going to have maybe some additional crossover episodes, some events, things like that. So we can’t thank you enough for coming on the show.

Describing to everybody what it’s all about, why they should get engaged. And GarageRide has been a very grassroots experience, which resonates a lot with GTM and with our community and with our listeners and our audience, and that, [01:04:00] you know, it’s more down to earth and how you guys are continuing to perpetuate enthusiasm in this case.

Enthusiasm around vehicles while GTM is continuing to try to spread motorsports enthusiasm

Donovan Lara: to me It’s really interesting when I have a conversation with somebody about what garage right is and I explain it to them And it’s funny because you can see them at first They’re kind of looking at you and you know when they get it because you can see that light go off, you know And then they start telling you oh, well, I could do this and I could do this and I could put you know this and that’s when you know, they get it and that’s been one of the most inspiring things because You You know, we’ve had people come up to us at shows and go, I love what you guys are doing, you know, keep doing it.

You know, I’m gonna get all my buddies on there. And that’s really, the goal was really to create something that we wanted to use and everybody else wanted to use.

Crew Chief Eric: So thank you again for coming on the show. It’s been really, really awesome.

Donovan Lara: Yeah. Thanks for having us. And you know, this is, this is a good partnership for us and, you know, we welcome any and everybody and, you know, no matter what you drive and based on what we said today or not, you know, you’re all welcome and we want to see you there.

Crew Chief Eric: There you go [01:05:00] guys. So when you get a chance, especially over the winter months here, check out www. garageriot. com reach out to at black and five, if you want to make some new friends.

Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out on www. gtmotorsports. org. You can also find us on Instagram at GrandTouringMotorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, You can call or text us at 202 630 1770, or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.

org. We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey listeners, Crew Chief Eric here. Do you like what you’ve seen, heard, and read from GTM? Great, so do we, and we have a lot of fun doing it. But please remember, we’re fueled by volunteers and remain a no annual fee organization, but we still need help to keep the momentum going.

So that we can continue to record, write, edit, and broadcast all of your favorite [01:06:00] content. So be sure to visit www. patreon. com forward slash gtmotorsports or visit our website and click in the top right corner on the support and donate to learn how you can help.

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